Today, many entities must create and manage complex data centers capable of storing and accessing hundreds of terabytes of data (e.g., text, image, and video data) that are generated and consumed every day by their users. These complex data centers often need to be capable of creating and storing duplicate copies of this data for disaster-recovery, testing, regulatory, or other purposes. Generally, different types of data have different storage requirements. Moreover, the storage requirements for any particular instance of data may change over time. For example, new or popular data may be considered “hot data” and need to be stored to fast storage devices and managed by fast servers. Alternatively, old or unpopular data may be considered “cold data” that may be stored to slower storage devices and/or managed by slower servers.
A typical data center generally includes different types of storage systems that have each been designed and configured for a single fixed purpose (e.g., warm-data storage, cold-data storage, etc.). Unfortunately, these different types of storage systems often use or require different types of components (e.g., different types of storage devices, storage controllers, servers, and network interfaces) that each operate and/or interface using one of several incompatible protocols or technologies. These complexities may make managing, configuring, servicing, replacing, and reconfiguring a data center's storage-system components difficult for those individuals enlisted to perform these tasks.